Another election is behind us, and some people are still basking in the glow of democracy. You know those people — Chris Matthews of MSNBC comes to mind — who think there is nothing better in life than being able to vote for who will run the government. (Sometimes they say “run the country!”)

“Consider yourself blessed,” they say. “In other parts of the world, people can’t do what you have the right to do.” This implies that the most important thing those other people lack is the right to traipse to the polls and cast their one vote each, thus having a “say” in who will “lead” them. I’d say they’re lacking more important things; after all, one vote rarely makes a difference.

Look in the mirror. If that person stayed home election day, Barack Obama would still have been reelected. It doesn’t matter that if several million Obama voters stayed home, Mitt Romney would have won. No one person controls several million votes. Each individual decides for himself or herself whether to go to the polls, and no one decides for someone else. Hence your vote doesn’t count.

So this difference between societies that get to vote for their “leaders” and those that don’t isn’t as great as it may seem. Is there some other difference that may be more significant?

Here’s a possibility: Freedom of speech, or the right to speak out. For many civil libertarians this right is what distinguishes a free country from an unfree one. By golly, every person has a right express his or her opinion. As long as that’s true, we are free people. Or so we’re told.

It is true that we Americans can express our opinions generally without fearing government reprisal — and that’s good. This isn’t true in North Korea or Cuba or Saudi Arabia, or even in some places that count as democratic. But is this really what makes a country free?

I’m not persuaded. Sure, it’s nice to speak out against a government policy. But does it do any good? I hate that the U.S. government has troops all around the world. I hate that the military occupies Afghanistan and meddles in civil wars. I hate that the president has a kill list from which he picks human targets and then dispatches remote-controlled drones to murder them with Hellfire missiles, often killing people other than the intended victims. I speak out and write about this all the time. What good has it done? Both presidential candidates supported these policies, which would have continued no matter who had won.

The freedom to speak out, then, is not quite what it’s cracked up to be. Maybe the people of North Korea, Cuban, Saudi Arabia, and those other countries wouldn’t be gaining quite as much as we like to think if that freedom were respected.

Actually there’s a more important freedom that they lack — one that we Americans lack too: the freedom to opt out. If you think the freedom to speak out is important, you should give some thought to the freedom to opt out. Now there is a freedom!

The freedom to opt out means that no one can force you to participate in any government activity that you object to. If you wanted to look after your own retirement pension, you could opt out of Social Security. If you wanted to arrange for your own medical care, you could opt out of Obamacare and Medicare. If you didn’t want to help agribusiness or Wall Street, you could opt out of subsidy and bailout programs. And so on.

Think about it: If you were repulsed by drone warfare against the children of Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, you could refuse to pay for it. If you retched at the thought of monstrous-looking U.S. troops breaking down doors in nighttime raids in Afghanistan, you could withdraw your financial support. If you thought the war on certain drug makers, vendors, and consumers was immoral, you could just say no to those who perpetrate it.

This would not get rid of the government immediately, as we market anarchists would like. But it would sure beat the hell out of what we have now.

17 comments

And when a crazed, Islamic terrorist sets off a bomb in your city or neighborhood, do the first responders get to "opt out" of helping you? Or when the Chinese start to implement their version of Manifest Destiny and launch an attack on our shores, do the men and women of the U.S. military get to "opt out" of defending your piece of America? Or how about when someone bigger and stronger, and better armed, than you just shows up and decides to take your house because they want it? Can the police just "opt out" of defending your property rights and your, and your family's, safety? Lest you forget, "market anarchy" is what followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. Today, we refer to it as the Dark Ages. That is because it was a time of true Social Darwinism, only those who were weak were quite literally sacrificed on the altars fo those who were strong.

-First, your racism is utterly mindblowing. You seem to imagine Muslims solely as "crazed, Islamic terrorists", when most Muslims are good peaceable folks like you and I. Plus, terrorism knows no color. "…Chinese launching their version of Manifest Destiny…launch an attack on our shores"? The 1890's are on the phone: they want their "yellow peril" hysterics back. Plus, these collective pronouns "the Chinese"? China is a nation of over a billion individuals.

-Then there is your Hobbesian presumption. Considering that the fields of psychology, sociology, behavioral economics, etc have repeatedly shown that most people are not brutes it astounds me that people still take this as true.

-The issue of property is a pretty fuzzy issue. But, you are aware that cops come in AFTER THE FACT? Then see the fact that most are not brutes.

-The term "Social Darwinism" seems to be what Rand would call an "anti-concept"; rather than clarifying thought, it distorts it. But, strong triumphing over the weak? Such a state of affairs is appalling; what's worse is that it still happens, disguised under moralistic platitudes. The only difference between the Dark Ages and our times is that people pretend that, somehow, our society is humane. The presence of a welfare state doesn't change the essentially violent nature of our society.

-I can't believe I have to repeat this: no anarchist is looking for the collapse of society. Seriously, dude.

Null Void:-I can't believe I have to repeat this: no anarchist is looking for the collapse of society ….

Oh, I don't know, I know a lot of anticivvies & deep ecologists who explicitly say that they are looking for this. Of course I think they are wrong, but that's because I'm not anti-civ and I'm not into Deep Ecology.

(At least in some sense of "looking for;" i.e. they think that it's inevitable, that some of the consequences will be desirable, that the main question is whether it will be a soft landing or a hard one, etc.)

Sure, I'm really quite all right with letting the agents of the state "opt out" of providing me their services. In fact I welcome it. Let's just see what kind of first responders and defenses the free market offers!

… do the first responders get to "opt out" of helping you? … (etc. etc., blurgle blargle)

Of course they do get to do that. Nobody is obliged to rescue me if I've never made a prior agreement with them.

Now was this actually intended as a good-faith question? Are you willing to take "No" as an answer? If I agree (as I do) that they obviously have every right to opt out of rescuing me, will you agree that I have every right to opt out of being taxed to fund them?

However, the entire discussion here is based on the really quite insane notion that agencies of government violence (e.g., the police, the military, and the fortification of U.S. national borders) are social services rendered to me. They are not. Government force is not a social service, let alone a service I have requested; it is antisocial coercion, a condition imposed on me, through the threat of overwhelming force if I should resist, without my consent, and quite against my will. You and I are not their customers, or their clients. We are their victims, and their milch-cows. You can decide for yourself whether that is what you personally like being; but speaking for myself, I would be immensely better off if I had never been subjected, and if my friends and loved ones had never been subjected, to coercion by government drug police, government highway police, government border police, and all the rest of the host of political control.

Lest you forget, "market anarchy" is what followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. Today, we refer to it as the Dark Ages. . . .

Well, it sounds like you believe a lot of ridiculous nonsense about what "market anarchy" means. (Manorialism, of course, is the antithesis of both markets and anarchy, in the usual meanings of those terms.) Or else you believe a lot of ridiculous nonsense about what medieval Europe was like. Or, most likely, both.

Are the "Islamists" attacking my neighborhood for my "Freedom?"
Would those Chineese be responding to our overwhelming presence all round their country? Manifest destiny is ours, and it is not always consonant with liberty among other problems, and is driven as a spear by those men in our military.
Do bullies use the guise of the state to enforce eminent domain "fairly" and with "regulated constraints" against we serfs?
Forgot the dark ages' anarchy, hell I hardly knew ya, and find she idea totally unsupported and unenlightened.
Darwin, are you sure you absorbed your schooling?

First Responders…. Yes they can quit any time they like.
Military … No, but they should as in any oher profession.
Police… As ruled time and again by all 51 supreme courts the police have not duty whatsoever to protect you.

Lest you forget, "market anarchy" is what followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. Today, we refer to it as the Dark Ages.

This is total nonsense. Which Max Boot article glorifying empire did this nugget of pig shit originate?

Crowder doesn't seem to understand that it is because of America's government implementing its version of manifest destiny in Muslim nations for over 50 years that motivates pissed off Muslims to set off bombs in America. Outside of bigoted Zionists, a relatively small number of people, there simply is no market to meddle in Muslim nations. If market anarchy existed in America, who would pay billions of dollars to antagonize other people on the other side of the planet?

Perhaps Crowder is merely projecting his own thinking onto others. He must be the type of person who, in the absence of government enforcers, would rape, kill and plunder while certain that nobody would be powerful enough to end his rampage of violence.

The ultimate statist concept ever is that nobody should even have the right to opt out of being "protected" by Crowder's beloved state. I suppose it must follow that everything not required is prohibited and everything not prohibited is required.

I don't think he is projecting his own violent nature. Instead, he is projecting his own fear of other people. "I'm OK, but everyone else is NOT OKAY." seems to sum him up.

Poor Mr. Crowder. So alienated from his fellows. He cannot see that most aren't worse than he-that they are probably entertaining the same thoughts.

Poor Mr. Crowder. So frightened of other people, seeing only murderers; rapists; thieves; and trespassers. No room in his imagination for potential friends, colleagues, neighbors…or even lovers. As I mentioned, his fear becomes pronounced when dealing with those of a *ahem* less pale hue.

Poor Mr. Crowder. To him, only the threat of violence keeps people civilized. He cannot see what a recent development the State and its various incarnations are. Unaware of how human beings lived before states. That they did not have market economies is irrelevant. (Graeber makes the case that economies as we know them could only come by violence.)

Sadly, he is not alone. The world is full of Christopher Crowders. Mussolini and Hitler can thank their Christopher Crowders. The American Empire counts on theirs as well.

Sheldon, your piece starts out sensibly enough, but then it devolves into another version of tired cliche of the taxpayer's lament. Not having funded an atrocity shouldn't make you feel better that it occurred. Furthermore, you're probably not even footing any part of the bill for the most recent ones because they get funded with borrowed money. Sure, a portion of the taxes we pay goes towards the debt service of our state's older atrocities, but what will withholding your taxes accomplish now? You can't un-napalm a Vietnamese village any more than you can un-bake a cake. The state doesn't really need money to do terrible things. It just needs your labor and your complacency. Dmytri Kleiner puts it nicely:

"We are not limited by any scarcity of tax dollars as to how many protestors we want to beat-up or how many countries we want to bomb, or for that matter, how many students we want educate or how many people we want to provide with medical care, we can only be limited by law and policy, and ultimately, by the productive capacity of our society. In other [words,] we are limited only by social choices as to how to employ our productive capacity." http://www.dmytri.info/tax-payers-lament/

You might want to reread my last paragraph. I didn't make any grand pronouncements about what would happen if we could opt out, although I think the consequences would be more substantial than you suggest. For example, who will buy government bonds if the government has no power to compel the taxpayers to cough up money?

I realize that you didn't make any grand pronouncements. I just found it unfortunate that your train of thought boiled down to outrage (if calmly stated) over what the government does with your tax-dollars. I merely contended that what the state simply does is more important than what it does with the funds it collects from you in taxes (regardless of whether it even needs to collect taxes to do those things).

And if the government couldn't, for whatever reason, compel you to pay taxes, it would just compel you to contribute in some other fashion, conscription of some sort. Bonds might be paid off in the delivery of certain products to the bond holders, not unlike how Germany delivered airships to the US as a part of WWI reparations.

Needless to say, if I favor the freedom to opt out of tax-funded activities, I favor the freedom to opt out of conscription. Taxation lies at the very foundation of the state–the draft board will want to be paid. Take that away and there's soon nothing left.

Well, it isn't needless to say because the the idea of voluntary taxation, as you've presented it, presumes that the state still exists somehow. And, as you suggest, voluntary taxation (and conscription, too) would not cause the state to vanish immediately. However, I probably expect such an outcome for a different reason than you. The ruling class will simply come up with ways to make us volunteer. They've already accomplished as much in the form of the economic draft where many of the working class find themselves with a terrible choice: crushing debt and bare sustenance or trying their luck in the military. I wouldn't be surprised to see other forms of voluntary indenturement appear in the absense of traditional taxation.

BTW, I tried replying by e-mail, but apparently it didn't work. My apologies if a repeat of this response should suddenly appear.

Not only is this simple idea spot-on economically, philosophically, and morally, but it is a hundred times simpler to make the case for than a fully explained "market anarchy". Nearly no one will take the time to understand just how profound are the arguments for statelessness. But instead of having to educate them about all the nuances, we can make a much simpler case: "I might be wrong, but let me peacefully opt out and try it. An extremist might blow me up in a free society, but let me take that chance. I won't coerce you into living within your society, and you return the favor."

How does a statist respond to this? "No, for your own good, I will lock you in a cage if you don't want to be part of my system!"